21 Amendments of Marco AFFRONTE related to 2015/2352(INI)
Amendment 1 #
Draft opinion
Recital A
Recital A
A. whereas Article 194 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union specifically upholds the right of a Member State to determine the conditions for exploiting its energy resources, whilst also upholding regard for solidarity and environmental protectionits Article 11 specifically establishes that environmental protection requirements must be integrated into the definition and development of the Union's policies and activities, and its Article 191 establishes as objectives of the environmental policy the protection of human health, and the prudent and rational utilisation of natural resources, among others;
Amendment 6 #
Draft opinion
Recital B
Recital B
B. whereas conventional indigenous sources of oil and gas contribute significantly to Europe's currrepresent ena vergy needs and are crucial at present for our energy security and energy diversitysmall and continuously declining share of world oil and gas proved reserves which is better to carefully conserve underground;
Amendment 9 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 a (new)
Paragraph 2 a (new)
2a. Deplores the fact that under Directives 2013/30/EU and 2004/35/EU incidents are defined as 'serious' only if they give rise to deaths or serious injuries, with no reference to the consequences for the environment; emphasises that even if it does not give rise to deaths or serious injuries an incident may have a serious impact on the environment, by virtue of its scale or because it affects, for example, protected areas, protected species or particularly vulnerable habitats;
Amendment 10 #
Draft opinion
Recital B a (new)
Recital B a (new)
Ba. whereas the potential unconventional European sources of gas and oil, and especially gas and oil captured in shale formations, to be extracted by hydraulic fracturing, remain extremely uncertain –as the 2011-2015 experience in Poland has soundly demonstrated–, due to greater depths than expected, high clay contents, and geological barriers of significant complexity, and furthermore it is met by strong reserves, when not outright opposition, of many European citizens and Member states, due to environmental and other impacts and triggered earthquakes;
Amendment 11 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 b (new)
Paragraph 2 b (new)
2b. Points out that a number of studies, including one by the European Parliament Research Service and one by the Joint Research Centre, put at several thousand, and more precisely 9700 between 1990 and 2007, the number of incidents in the EU oil and gas sector; points out, further, that the cumulative impact of these incidents, including those which are only small in scale, has serious and lasting repercussions for the marine environment and should be taken into account in the directive;
Amendment 12 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 c (new)
Paragraph 2 c (new)
2c. Deplores the fact that Directive 2013/30/EU fails to take account of the widespread and lasting damage caused to the environment by small oil spills (650 000 tonnes in the Mediterranean alone in 2015) brought about by minor incidents which, when taken together, have the same impact as a serious incident;
Amendment 13 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 d (new)
Paragraph 2 d (new)
2d. Notes that, although Directive 2013/30/EU stipulates that the public must be given the opportunity to take part in the decision-making process concerning exploratory offshore operations before such operations are authorised, very little information is in fact made available to the public, so that the relevant provision of the directive is effectively a dead letter;
Amendment 15 #
Draft opinion
Recital C
Recital C
C. whereas there is already an extensive body of international law and international conventions which govern the seas, including European waters, although they have a limited preventive capacity, as demonstrated by a decades-long record of environmental disasters linked to offshore spills caused worldwide by the extractive industry;
Amendment 19 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Reiterates the need for sound risk analysis and environmental impact assessment of every offshore operation and for the appropriate training of staff; emphasises the importance of making the procedure for assessing environmental impact clearer and consistent with other EU rules and with policy in areas such as biodiversity, climate change, sustainable soil use, protection of the marine environment and vulnerability to and resilience against incidents and natural disasters; deplores the fact that the directive fails to address properly the issue of the prevention of natural disasters;
Amendment 22 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Underscores the fact that the Member States already have the world's best-performing offshore safety regimes and that overregulation in this area would seriously harm the competitiveness of theirthe strict respect of existing regulation in this area is a constraint to be respected in any circumstance by their extractive industries;
Amendment 28 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Points out that, as regards 'liability for offshore accidents and their consequences, the Offshore Safety Directive (OSD) channels it unequivocally to offshore licensees, i.e. the individual or joint holders of authorizations for oil/gas prospection, exploration, and/or production operations issued in accordance with Directive 94/22/EC1 . It also makes the licensees strictly liable for any environmental damage resulting from their operations'; however, there are founded doubts about this condition being sufficient, since it has been stated unequivocally by the same Directive that no existing financial security instruments, including risk pooling arrangements, can accommodate all possible consequences of major accidents; moreover, although the OSD contains specific provisions for liability and compensation-related issues, it does not put in place a comprehensive EU framework for liability, since it neither deals with liability for civil damage (i.e. caused to natural or legal persons, including bodily injury, property damage and economic loss, both consequential and pure), nor addresses criminal liability for offshore accidents, arising out of committing a criminal act qualified as such by the law. _________________ 1 OJ L 164, 30.6.1994, p. 3.
Amendment 31 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5a. Emphasises the need to ensure that offshore operations are subject to constant, expert monitoring by the Member States in respect of compliance with EU law, in order to guarantee that effective checks are carried out with the aim of preventing serious incidents and limiting their impact on persons and the environment;
Amendment 32 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Notes that although the OSD contains some specific provisions on liability and compensation-related issues, it does not establish a comprehensive EU framework for liability; deplores the fact that, under Article 41(3) and (5) of Directive 2013/30/EU, some Member States are partially exempt from the requirement to transpose the directive, and takes the view that derogations of this kind undermine the uniform application of EU law;
Amendment 38 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6 a (new)
Paragraph 6 a (new)
6a. Notes that, with a view to reducing the risks which stem from incidents on offshore platforms, compensation procedures, which are rather slow in most Member States, should also be improved;
Amendment 38 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 a (new)
Paragraph 3 a (new)
3a. Underlines that the Commission itself has highlighted that liability for civil damage (i.e. third party damage, or 'traditional damage') from offshore oil and gas operations in the European Economic Area (EEA) is still poorly understood; at the same time, it highlights that the expectations of the public, civil society and some authorities are high, but there is no coherent perspective on the kinds of claims that would be permissible, nor how to manage such claims effectively in the case of major accidents – particularly accidents that cross boundaries;
Amendment 39 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6 b (new)
Paragraph 6 b (new)
6b. Deplores the fact that Member States may use the option not to transpose and apply Article 20 of the directive on the grounds that no company which conducts offshore operations outside the territory of the Union is registered in their jurisdiction; in order to ensure effective implementation of Directive 2013/30/EU, urges the Member States to ensure that companies already registered on their territory do not circumvent the directive by extending their activities to include offshore operations without notifying that extension to the competent national authorities;
Amendment 40 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6 c (new)
Paragraph 6 c (new)
6c. Deplores the fact that some Member States have transposed the directive only in part, incorrectly and in a manner not consistent with EU rules, omitting key provisions;
Amendment 41 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Notes that there is a 'broad variety of financial security products available to hedge oil and gas companies’ operating risk. These range from self-insurance options, to third-party insurance, to mutual schemes such as the Offshore Pollution Liability Association Ltd (OPOL), to alternative risk transfer mechanisms and others'; this notwithstanding, none of them is able to fully protect the Member states from the combined consequences of the challenging insolvency and transboundary problems that can demonstrably arise from major offshore incidents;
Amendment 44 #
4a. Highlights that the consequence of such an incident is likely to be a socialization of the incident's costs to local communities, the State and other businesses dependent on the marine economy; such externalization can be further composed by the complexity of the existing international legal framework, which makes it difficult to advance successful transboundary damage claims;
Amendment 49 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Concludes that there is no need to give consideration to further legislation until the Commission has published its report on implementation of the OSD., while respecting the deadlines established for the Commission to publish its report on implementation of the OSD, due for July 2019, it is of the utmost importance for the Union to pursue actively during this period the research about how a comprehensive EU's framework for liability should be put in place, as a necessary complement to the regulatory process, in order to better protect possible damaged parties, and to better reflect European societal values;
Amendment 82 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 13 a (new)
Paragraph 13 a (new)
13a. Points out that, under Article 193 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the Member States may adopt more stringent measures to implement directives; calls, therefore, for the more stringent implementation of Directive 2013/30/EU, with a view, for example, to restricting the use of air guns for the offshore exploration of hydrocarbons, given their proven impact on marine mammals and fish stocks;